The Lies We Tell Ourselves

A young friend recently served fifteen months as a combat infantryman at an isolated patrol base in the nasty farmlands south of Baghdad. One day, he was enjoying a hot meal in the chow hall at a nearby forwarding operating base, when Condoleezza Rice appeared on the TV screen saying that the violence in Iraq hadn’t reached the point at which random bodies were turning up in the streets. The noise of dozens of hungry soldiers eating came to a stop. Some of them exchanged glances, but no one said a word. Since my friend, while out on patrol, regularly came across the corpses of tortured and murdered Iraqi civilians, he wondered if the Secretary of State was dissembling or deluded. It was, he let me know, a bad moment for him and his buddies.

I thought of this story when I read the transcript of an interview last Friday with President Bush by Martha Raddatz, of ABC. Bush, under the kind of questioning he rarely gets, admitted that in 2006, with violence soaring, he worried that the mission in Iraq might be headed for failure. But, in order to keep up morale among the troops, he kept insisting at the time that we were “winning.” Phillip Carter (whose excellent blog Intel Dump has just been picked up by the Washington Post) was serving as an Army adviser to the Iraqi courts during those grim months; I spent a few days at his compound in downtown Baquba in early 2006. He writes that he isn’t cheered to learn of the President’s solicitousness for his state of mind:

All through this period, I remember the President, his senior aides and senior military commanders toeing the party line that things were going swimmingly. The dissonance between the rhetoric from Washington and our experience in Iraq was stark. We knew the ground truth. Being deceived by our senior political leaders certainly didn’t change that, nor did it help morale at all. If anything, it hurt morale by undermining confidence in the chain of command. Put bluntly, if you can’t trust your generals and political leaders to tell you and your families the truth, how can you trust them at all?

I would argue that the morale-boosting the President now credits himself with did even more harm than that. It wasn’t as though the White House was feverishly correcting in private the problems that it refused to acknowledge publicly for fear of crushing the spirit of Captain Phillip Carter. Instead, while Iraq descended into a death spiral, Bush continued for months, even years, to pursue the bankrupt strategy of handing over responsibility from an undermanned American military to an Iraqi army that was incapable of holding ground. I’ve been told by a former White House official that the President had misgivings but remained confident in the strategy’s author, Donald Rumsfeld. When I interviewed Rice in early 2006 and asked her whether the strategy might be headed for failure, she dismissed the possibility: “Even though there is violence, there is a process that is moving, I think rather inexorably, actually, toward an outcome that will one day bring a stable Iraq.”

This wasn’t morale-boosting. It was what the Administration calls strategic communications, otherwise known as political propaganda. And, in the end, it became self-delusion. You can’t keep lying to the troops and the public without eventually believing your own words. This, in turn, makes it impossible to analyze and correct mistakes. It ensures failure, and failure kills morale. On my desk I have a copy of Douglas Feith’s new book, “War and Decision”—the first memoir by a main architect of the war policy in Washington. Once I’ve read it, I’ll let you know whether Feith shows any more evidence of self-critical thinking than he or anyone else in the Administration demonstrated throughout the years of the war.

Last Request: Please Don’t Smoke

View Sean (Ajka_Hungary)’s map

Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

41 hours in an elevator

TOP 10 Shirts To Get Arrested In

10. Never mention Sex in the pen

9. Bambi: Kmart by day, Stripper by night

8. Say that to the judge.

7. Better hope you aren’t sharing a cell with one.

6. He must have been busy…your whole life.

5. About bunnies? No.

4. Better hope you’re in jail for less than that.

3. Arrested Drunks go to jail.

2. Except in this case.

1. No, but you are awesome.

Liz Hurley is back in a bikini at 42

Not so long ago she declared that she was done with bikinis.

 

Never again, Elizabeth Hurley said, would she sit eating lunch on a boat in a skimpy two-piece.

The same went for tripping around the beach in a bikini top and skirt with her midriff showing.

But as these pictures indicate, Miss Hurley will relax the rules under certain conditions.

Scroll down for more…

 

In the yacht-set shoot, Liz Hurley smoulders in the two piece

 

The swimming-suits for Mango have a body-con style feel – one of this year’s key trends

 

Firstly, it must be in her best business interests, such as helping to launch a series of her own swimwear designs in a diffusion range for the High Street store Mango.

And there must – read must – be an airbrush involved.

In an interview to accompany these photographs in the Sunday Times Style magazine, the model and businesswoman conceded that “shooting bikinis is now my life”.

She said: “I can’t think of anything worse in the world than another bikini shoot – and I’ve got two next month.

Scroll down for more…

 

Hot pink: She may be 42 but Hurley has the figure of a woman half her age

 

In a range of styles the diffusion line is sure to be a summer high street hit

 

“It’s unbearable and I bring it all on myself. I’ve got nobody else to blame.”

But, she revealed, she now relies on “nice photographers” and a little digital enhancement.

“I like a certain amount of retouching like anybody,” she admitted.

Even if they have been airbrushed a little, the photos suggest that Miss Hurley, 42, has made good on her promise to “go to ground and annoy everyone by emerging thinner, sexier and mentally cleansed”.

She made that vow in an interview in 2005, at the same time as she spoke of instituting her bikini ban.

Scroll down for more…

 

Accessorising only with chunky jewellery Hurley does skimpy with style

 

In one shot the model covers up with a kaftan but still looks enviably stunning

 

Miss Hurley, a mother of one, revealed that when she looked in the mirror she saw “a person who eats too much junk food and doesn’t exercise. That has sadly become my reality over the past year”.

Commenting on one of her own designs for Elizabeth Hurley Beach, she said her days of wearing a towelling miniskirt, bikini top and flip-flops were over.

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that any more,” she said. “As the years go by you do feel less confident about your body.”

Miss Hurley is not afraid to follow strict diets when she needs to drop weight fast.

Her regime after the birth of son Damian, now six, was punishing, she said at the time.

“I did it by eating very little breakfast and not too much lunch.

“And only boring snacks such as a banana or six raisins. The only meal I have is dinner.”

She lost four stone, and was back in her trademark white jeans within three months of Damian’s birth.

 

Covering up: Liz Hurley and husband Arun Nayar

Scientists: Even Bigger Quake Could Hit Midwest

The magnitude 5.2 earthquake that rocked the Midwest on Friday was felt from Kansas to Georgia, and aftershocks could continue for months at this strange seismic zone at the nation’s center and even trigger another big quake, a geophysicist said.

The quake occurred on a northern extension of the New Madrid fault, about 6 miles north of Mt. Carmel, Ill. The New Madrid fault was responsible for devastating quakes in the Mississippi Valley in 1811 and 1812. So the Friday quake and its aftershocks likely are raising the blood pressure of some residents and scientists.

For decades, scientists have debated whether and when the underlying fault could generate another temblor of similar and deadly strength.

“I think we saw a window to this possibility today in the Wabash Valley,” said geophysicist Allessandro Forte of the Université du Québec à Montréal, who has studied the region’s seismicity. “It’s to the north of the New Madrid seismic zone, but given the strength of crust, the stress can be distributed great distances. It’s not clear if we could see something in the next few years or even next few months, I would say.”

The last earthquake in the region to approach the severity of Friday’s temblor was a 5.0 magnitude quake that shook a nearby area in 2002, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

An event actually surpassing today’s magnitude last occurred in 1968, a magnitude 5.3 quake that was felt in 23 states, said Forte. The magnitude scale is logarithmic so a change of 0.1 or 0.2 makes a big difference in terms of energy output. The 1968 event was felt in Ontario and Boston.

“The $64,000 question is what this earthquake portends for the future,” Forte said. “The answer is I’m afraid it can go either way.”

Stress relief or hair trigger?

One scenario predicts that some stress is relieved on the local faults where this earthquake occurred and will cool things down for a few decades. The other scenario is not so happy.

“There is the possibility, and we can only see over next few months what will happen, that the redistribution of stress on neighboring faults might trigger further earthquakes, and we can only guess as to whether they’ll be equally large as today’s earthquake,” Forte said.

Aftershocks from the Friday quake will continue for several weeks, maybe months, he said. Already, there have been many, of magnitudes in the range of 2 and 3, radiating outward from the epicenter.

“If we are seeing a propagation outward of stress changes after today’s 5.2, which was a big one, and those stress changes finally come up on a fault which is on a hair trigger and ready to go, those small changes are sufficient to generate another big one on a fault which is locked and ready to go,” Forte said.

How much risk?

Recent estimates have downgraded the risk of a large earthquake on the New Madrid fault.

In the 1980s, scientists said there was a 90 percent chance of a magnitude 6 or 7 temblor occurring in this area within the next 50 years.

A 2007 USGS fact sheet, however, said there is only a 25 percent to 40 percent chance of a magnitude 6 or larger there in the next 50 years.

However, a team that includes Michael Ellis of the University of Memphis estimated in 2005 that the odds of another 8.0 event in the region within 50 years are between 7 and 10 percent.

These debates about the New Madrid fault are far from resolved, Forte said, with some saying the accumulated stress in area faults is weakening while others say it is not going to dissipate any time soon. “This is not exactly a well-defined science as yet,” he said.

Forte is part of the latter camp, based on his research on an ancient, giant slab of Earth called the Farallon slab that started its descent under the West Coast 70 million years ago and now is causing mayhem and deep mantle flow 360 miles beneath the Mississippi Valley, where it effectively pulls the crust down an entire kilometer (.62 miles).

“The stresses from the sinking Farallon slab are not going to disappear any time soon,” he said.

So, apparently, is J. David Rogers in the latter camp. The geological engineer at Missouri University of Science and Technology says Midwestern earthquakes are potentially more powerful than California quakes.

Shakier situation

Unique geology in the Midwest increases the shaking intensity of earthquakes because seismic energy moves through the dense bedrock at very high speeds, then becomes trapped in soft sediments filling river channels and valleys, Rogers said.

Rogers and some of his graduate students have been modeling synthetic seismic events in the New Madrid region. Most of their scenarios are modeled after an 1895 earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 that was centered in Charleston, Mo.

The preliminary results are sobering, said Rogers. Data indicates ground shaking would be magnified about 600 percent within the flood plain of the Missouri River, a development that would cause most of Missouri’s existing long-span bridges to collapse.

“You don’t even need a really big earthquake to do significant damage in Missouri,” Rogers says. “It could happen tomorrow.”

The relative quake risk of the New Madrid seismic zone is a great debate that might be driven in part by competition for grant money, Forte said. Those scientists who work on West Coast quakes have an incentive to claim that the research money should be spent on that region, while the central continent-focused researchers obviously are more invested in funds coming their way.

80-Year-Old Man Walks Around the World

Harry Lee McGinnis, better known as “The Hawk,” has seen his fair share of the world. He’s trekked through all 50 states, criss-crossed the Continent, and explored the depths of Asia, Africa, and South America, carrying only a 100-pound backpack and a large steel-tipped walking staff, walking everywhere he goes. You might imagine this intrepid adventurer as a young Indiana Jones type, but picture Indy’s dad instead: McGinnis is 80 years old.

His age hasn’t slowed him down for a second, though. For the last 18 years, this World War II veteran and former Methodist minister has committed his life to exploring the world by foot, taking other means of transportation only under extremely rare circumstances.

To date, he’s made his way through 66 different countries, dining on roasted termites and other exotic dishes, encountering elephants and apes, and making new friends in every country he passes through. His feet have logged about 80,000 miles so far, and he plans to explore Central America and Mexico before finally concluding his round-the-world journey in Texas. Until then, he’s writing updates about his international adventures on his website, Walk of the Hawk.

He doesn’t expect to be finished with his journey until 2010 or 2012, but he’s still got plenty of plans for the rest of his days: When he finally heads home, he’ll write a book about his decades of wandering the planet.

And after that? “I want to play tennis at 100,” he told Reuters, though he’ll concede “it might have to be doubles.”

“Hyper-Speed” Evolution Discovered

Think it takes thousands or even millions of years for animals to evolve significantly new traits? Think again. New research lends just a touch of credibility to the idea behind the popular sci-fi TV series Heroes, which portrays certain humans as having quickly evolved new astounding traits in response to increasingly tumultuous environmental pressures.

easingly tumultuous environmental pressures.

In 1971 biologists moved 5 adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their island home of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, and introduced them to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has discovered that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo shockingly fast and large-scale evolutionary changes.

Researchers returned to the islands twice a year for three years, in the spring and summer of 2004, 2005 and 2006. Captured lizards were transported to a field laboratory and measured for snout-vent length, head dimensions and body mass. Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste. In other words, there is no doubt that these lizards are the offspring of the 1971 transplant. The results of the study were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The lizards evolved entirely new digestive system features to cope with dietary changes, evolved bigger heads and also ceased to defend territories—an instinct once very integral to the species behavior back on their original home territory. 

“Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” remarks Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Observed changes in head morphology were caused by adaptation to a different food source explains Irschick. The lizards on the barren island of Pod Kopiste were well-suited to catching mobile prey, feasting mainly on insects. Life on Pod Mrcaru, where they had never lived before, offered them an abundant supply of plant foods, including the leaves and stems from native shrubs. Analysis of the stomach contents of lizards on Pod Mrcaru showed that their diet included up to two-thirds plants, depending on the season, a large increase over the population of Pod Kopiste.

“As a result, individuals on Pod Mrcaru have heads that are longer, wider and taller than those on Pod Kopiste, which translates into a big increase in bite force,” says Irschick. “Because plants are tough and fibrous, high bite forces allow the lizards to crop smaller pieces from plants, which can help them break down the indigestible cell walls.”

Examination of the lizard’s digestive tracts revealed something even more surprising. Eating more plants caused the development of new structures called cecal valves, designed to slow the passage of food by creating fermentation chambers in the gut, where microbes can break down the difficult to digest portion of plants. Cecal valves, which were found in hatchlings, juveniles and adults on Pod Mrcaru, have never been reported for this species, including the source population on Pod Kopiste.

“These structures actually occur in less than 1 percent of all known species of scaled reptiles,” says Irschick. “Our data shows that evolution of novel structures can occur on extremely short time scales. Cecal valve evolution probably went hand-in-hand with a novel association between the lizards on Pod Mrcaru and microorganisms called nematodes that break down cellulose, which were found in their hindguts.”

Change in diet also affected the population density and social structure of the Pod Mrcaru population. Because plants provide a larger and more predictable food supply, there were more lizards in a given area on Pod Mrcaru. Food was obtained through browsing rather than the active pursuit of prey, and the lizards had given up defending territories.

“What is unique about this finding is that rapid evolution can affect not only the structure and function of a species, but also influence behavioral ecology and natural history,” says Irschick.

So next time you see Hayden Panettiere on TV running around in her cheer skirt regenerating her limbs, just think how the premise may be just slightly less crazy that you previously suspected.

 

Saudi women ‘kept in childhood’

Women cannot make even simple decisions on children, the report says

Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so male relatives can exercise “guardianship” over them, the Human Rights Watch group has said.

The New York-based group says Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care.

Their access to justice is also severely constrained, it says.

The group says the Saudi establishment sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

Saudi clerics see the guardianship of women’s honour as a key to the country’s social and moral order.

‘No progress’

The report, Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia, draws on more than 100 interviews with Saudi women.

Farida Deif, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch, said: “Saudi women won’t make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies.”

It’s astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty Farida Deif, Human Rights Watch Read the full HRW report

The report says that Saudi women are denied the legal right to make even trivial decisions for their children – women cannot open bank accounts for children, enrol them in school, obtain school files or travel with their children without written permission from the child’s father.

Human Rights Watch says that Saudi women are prevented from accessing government agencies that have no established female sections unless they have a male representative.

The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities, the report says.

Male guardianship over adult women also contributes to their risk of exposure to violence within the family as victims of violence find it difficult to seek protection or redress from the courts.

Social workers, physicians and lawyers say that it is nearly impossible to remove guardianship from male guardians who are abusive, the group says.

“It’s astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty,” said Ms Deif.

“For Saudi women, reaching adulthood brings no rights, only responsibilities.”

Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes

Grammar nazis are so last century. Welcome, friends, to the brave new world of the typography nazi. Below are ten mistakes that everyone makes, an explanation of why each is wrong, and details on how to fix them. At least, you’ll see how to fix them on the Mac; under Windows, you’ll need to dig through tables of Alt characters. Have fun. (If you decide it’s time to be more accurate with your type on the Mac, get PopChar.)

Such typographic faux pas are not as potentially dangerous as grammatical fuckups – there’s little chance that using a period instead of an interpunct will obscure or confuse your meaning – but they are nevertheless wrong, at least for the time being. The large-type heading for each section contains an example of a typographic mistake; if you can see what’s wrong in each one before reading the explanation below, give yourself a pat on the back. Then examine your life priorities.

One last disclaimer before we get started: by ‘mistakes everyone makes’, I include my lazy-assed self and exclude you if you’re a professional typographer. Or just someone who care about the little things in this amoral pit of a world…

“What’s wrong?”
OK, an easy one to start. Yup, those aren’t proper quote marks; they should be ‘sixty-six and ninety-nine’ quotes. The mistake happens because typewriters, pushed for space, decided to have only one neutral quote on the keyboard, not dedicated opening and closing quotes, and the convention stuck.
THE FIX: alt-[ and alt-shift-[ for double quotes; alt-] and alt-shift-] for singles.

New in iWork ‘08!
Of course, now we have word processors that do smart quotes for us automatically, everything’s cushty, right? Wrong. If you type the above sentence in Word or any other modern app, it will think that because you type the first ‘apostrophe’ in a sentence, you want an opening, ‘six-style’ single quote. Instead you actually want a ‘nine-style’, closing apostrophe, so you have to enter it manually – or type two and go back and delete the first – so that the sentence reads New in iWork ’08!
THE FIX: As above.

I am 5′ 10″ tall
So those ’straight’ quotes aren’t for proper quotes, but they represent feet and inches, right? Wrong. They’re not actually for anything. Feet and inches should be represented by primes, which look a bit like straight quotes tilted slightly to the right. If your browser supports the characters, the above statement should read: I am 5′ 10″ tall.
THE FIX: Sorry, but this is a bugger to fix. If you’re in InDesign or QuarkXPress, use the glyphs palette. Otherwise, OS X’s Character Palette – check the International pane of System Preferences – is your only salvation.

10.5″ x 9.4″ x 4.5″
You fix one problem, and another one just bloody well comes along. So, hurrah for getting the primes right, but using a lowercase X for the ‘by’ character is another lazy I-can-see-it-on-the-keyboard-so-I’ll-just-type-it thing. Correctly rendered, the above measurement should be 10.5″ × 9.4″ × 4.5″, not 10.5″ x 9.4″ x 4.5″.
THE FIX: Again, a tricky one. You’ll need to break out the character palettes.

14º and overcast
This is a really subtle one, but that degrees symbol you see up there isn’t a degrees symbol at all. It’s actually an O ordinal, used, inter al, in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to denote masculine gender.
THE FIX: alt-0 gives you the ordinal, while alt-shift-8 is a true degrees symbol; alt-K is a ring above accent. [thanks, silverpie!]

Some – indeed most – use hyphens incorrectly
A hyphen – the kind of short dash you see above – should really only be used when linking words such as ready-made. It shouldn’t even be used mathematically to represent a minus, as there’s a dedicated character for that, too [thanks, Dash Nazi!]. Most other uses mandate an en dash – as here, for example – or when planning meetings from 1–2. Changing fashions mean the the long dash—this one, called an em dash—is rarely seen, but where it is, it’s usual to render it without the spaces on either side or with special hairline spaces instead.
THE FIX: alt-hyphen for an en dash, alt-shift-hyphen for the em.

Only £17.99!
Again, laziness and the democratisation of typesetting mean that we’ve lost the use of the correct interpunct in prices. £17.99 should be correctly rendered £17·99. After decimalisation in 1971, a period was only supposed to be used if technical limitations meant that a middle dot couldn’t be printed.
THE FIX: shift-alt-9 types an interpunct [thanks, Nic!]

Nobody cares…
Quite probably. But what you see above is just three periods, not a true ellipsis. Want a proper ellipsis? OK then… (In this font, three periods looks like this, much more tightly packed…)
THE FIX: alt-; types a proper ellipsis.

These (honest!) are brackets
No, those are parentheses. Brackets [like these ones] are used to add in information missing from a sentence you shouldn’t change – such as a direct quote – or to add information outside the voice of the original text. And don’t think you’re smart using angle brackets to replace quotation marks when writing French; <en français> is horribly wrong, and you should instead use proper guillemets if you want to write «en français».
THE FIX: Just be aware of the difference, and don’t call parentheses brackets! [Note that Lise makes a very good case for me being wrong in the comments, but I'm not so sure. More research is needed...]

3 1/2″ and 5 1/4″ disks are obsolete
Though complex fractions have to be created individually, most mainstream fonts have the characters for a quarter, a half and three quarters. 3½″ and 5¼″ not only look better and are more accurate than the use of the forward slash, but they’re clearer too. 3 1/2 looks like ‘three and one or two’, and you obviously need the space in there otherwise it becomes 31/2. In this age of decimalisation, 3.5″ or 5.25″ are, of course, alternatives, but there are some uses where a proper fraction is more sympathetic to the source or context than a forced decimal.
THE FIX: You’re going to need your character palettes again. You didn’t just tidy them away after the last time, did you?

Well, how did you score? Do you have your own typographic bugbears? Or am I just an insufferable busybody who will hasten myself to an early grave, getting my panties in a bunch about stuff that doesn’t matter a damn? That’s what the comment box is for…